Harry Potter and the Other Slytherin Girl
by OCD ADD Goldfish
Summary: Collection of Harry/Tracey Drabbles for the 100 Little Things Challenge. Unconnected, some AU. Title may be subject to change. Drabble requests also welcome!
1. Fire Hazard

**Disclaimer:** I do not own the world of Harry Potter. Just playing with it's characters.

 **Challenges:** 100 Little Things by _halffictionalprincess_. The If You Dare Challenge.

 **Prompt:** (#11) Hold Hands. (#466) Fire Hazard.

* * *

 _ **Fire Hazard**_

 _ **Or**_

 _ **Slytherin Girls DON'T Cry**_

Tracey didn't handle emotions well... or rather... feeling emotional.

She'd said it herself... but to an extent she believed that she was an emotional cripple. Something she was sure she had in common with the majority of her housemates.

But what was to be expected from the House that was known for it's cunning? For it's manipulations. For it's strong sense of self-preservation (which she was sure most would like to call selfishness but Tracey saw it more as a primal instinct that everyone had, Slytherins simply being fare more pragmatic about it).

As such... Tracy didn't handle _hurting_ well.

Even physical pain was too much weakness to tolerate showing. But emotional pain... emotional weakness?

It was simply unthinkable. It was … disgusting.

As such... one of her methods for handling emotional hurting was to become angry... anger was so much more acceptable- most people didn't even realize that anger _was_ a weaknesss, and Tracey nor anyone else who knew it as such, was in any rush to point it out when used as a smokescreen to cover utter heart-ache.

Tracey wasn't even sure why she was so... hurt. She'd thought she'd become jaded to this kind of thing already... but then she supposed, even jaded Slytheirns weren't made of ice as stone, much as they might wish for it.

X

Harry felt the sinking of his stomach as he stared at the pretty, dark-haired girl, knowing instantly that something was monumentally wrong.

For the most part, and much to Harry's surprise, Tracey Davis was not like other girls he'd met, much less what he'd become used to expecting from the Slytherin girls.

Tracey was a very clever girl, with dry wit, and was for the most part, easy-going and surprisingly low-maintenance.

She was petite, and slim, with large dark eyes and dark-brown hair that had strands of dark, fiery red hidden amongst the dark strands of brown.

She never really seemed to become upset; was blunt and honest somehow without being too hurtful; and she didn't shy from doing exactly as she wanted, no matter what other's would say.

Harry wasn't sure exactly how it happened... how they became almost friends, and then quickly became so much more than that. In part, he knew the latter part was more due to Tracey's initiative than anything he'd done himself... he supposed that was Slytherin determination for you.

The first part... well that was the unexpected outcome of them both accumulating three weeks worth of detention with Hagrid due to a Weasley Wizard's Wheezes- related mishap.

"Umm... what are you doing, Tracey?" Harry asked, trying not to startle the seemingly fuming girl who was tossing things into a hole in the Forbidden Forrest, while her robes were covered in dirt along with her hands, as if she'd dug the- very deep hole- with her own two hands.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" she snapped, snarling at him and raising her voice, and Harry was sure he'd never seen Tracey so angry before, though he'd known the girl for only six months and had been dating her for only half that time.

"I don't know..." Harry said cautiously, even as he momentarily tore his eyes away from his girlfriend and peered briefly into the hole.

He wasn't sure what to make of the assortment of items tossed inside the hole, but he was sure he saw letters and perhaps pictures along with books and even... a plushie snake.

If Harry didn't know any better... he'd think Tracey was getting rid of keepsakes of a past boyfriend... but then, as far as he was aware, Tracey had only ever dated one boy, Theodore Nott, and that was only for an extremely short period of time in their fourth year which had been two years prior.

"I'm getting rid of a bunch of garbage!" Tracey snapped, even as she whipped out her wand and startled Harry when she suddenly lit the pit of items on fire, her beautiful face twisted into a determined scowl- which didn't detract from her beauty, but did scare Harry a bit.

"Do you usually light things on fire when you're upset?" Harry asked trying to sound calming.

Tracey to snap her head towards him, her eyes flashing from the blaze which seemed to rocket up. Harry was almost impressed, Tracey's ability with fire seemingly putting Seamus' pyrotechnic skills to shame.

"I'm NOT upset! _I_ don't get _upset_! I get angry!" Tracey snapped, her words coming out loudly, even in spite of her clenching her jaw.

Harry put his hands up, palms out.

"Okay... you're not upset. Why are you angry then?" Harry tried.

Tracey's face momentarily spasmed as if she was in great pain and she steadfastly turned away, trying to use her long, wavy locks of hair as a shield from his gaze.

"He's getting married! Married!" Tracey yelled, but Harry was completely nonplussed, unsure who she was talking about.

"Who-" he started to ask, but Tracey was getting well into a rant that she did not hear him.

"He hasn't even been divorced for three months! The ink was probably barely drying on the page when he got his marriage license! Who does that? What kind of pig, does that?" Tracey went on. "He left us... for a girl who's not even ten years older than me! And he's going to marry her. And you know what's worse?!"

Harry wasn't sure what to say, already his stomach squirming extremely uncomfortably, even as he continued to remain completely lost while Tracey's eyes seemed to become exceedingly shiny. And for a moment, he feared that all her anger had somehow morphed into something that would soon have her wailing, and Harry didn't know how to deal with crying... his neck was already burning at his ineptitude with handling such an emotional outburst.

"She's pregnant! She's almost bursting!" Tracey went on, not noticing or perhaps simply not caring, about Harry's discomfort. "They're going to have a baby- He's..." and here her voice cracked and lost volume as she stared at the ground with a heart-broken expression that made Harry feel like he couldn't breathe... because he didn't know Tracey could be so hurt. Because she'd always been so strong, and cavalier and...

"He's replacing me," she almost whispered. "He's... he's finally getting what he wanted... a wife... a child … who don't freak him out and scare him. Normalcy. He'd going to forget all about me!"

And Harry felt that he was beginning to understand... Tracey was talking about her father...

She almost never mentioned him before.

" _I'm not a pureblood! Well..my mother is, but my dad's a muggle... my grandparents disinherited my mother for marrying him..."_ and that was as much as Tracey had ever said about her family... and only because she wanted to disabuse him from his assumptions that all Slytherins were pureblood and pureblood supremacists.

Harry wasn't sure what to say as Tracey lapsed into silence, gasping for breath as she attempted to breathe and turned away from him, hiding her face as she angrily wiped at her eyes.

"It doesn't matter," Tracey went on after a moment, her tone rough and hard, as Harry remained frozen and incapable of offering anything... because he didn't know what it was like to be in Tracey's shoes... because he didn't know enough about her home-life to even be able to offer simple platitudes... and just what kind of a boyfriend was he?

"I don't need him!" Tracey went on, and Harry was sure even despite her voice, that she was still trying to convince herself of that as she stared at the still burning flames. "I _don't_... I'm fine on my own... I'm a Slytherin..."

And Harry wondered, because the words sounded so much like a mantra, how often Tracey said those words to herself.

Without being able to take it any longer, Harry slipped his hand over Tracey's.

He wanted to draw the girl into a hug, but he doubted she'd be receptive to even the slightest touch, and settled for this... his bigger hand wrapping around the clenched fist at her side, her smaller, cold hand, burning his skin, branding it.

She flexed her hand, Harry thought she was shaking him off and held firmly- he was surprised, when she turned her hand and gently squeezed him back, though she would not look at him.

She couldn't, Harry understood. She wanted to be strong... but she was letting him do this much for her, and showing in her small way, that she was letting him in a little.

And Harry thought, he might just love her that little bit more and that maybe, he wasn't such a failure as a boyfriend after all.

 _ **~FIN~**_

 _ **Review please!**_


	2. I Think I Love My Fiance

**Prompts:** (#44) Tell her about how you answered every question in math with her name. (#532) Dreaded Fall.

* * *

 _ **I Think I Love My Fiance**_

"I'm never getting married," Tracey Davis told Daphne Greengrass once, never imagining in a million years that the choice would be taken from her hands. That the Ministry would, in her sixth year, enact an archaic law that would not only force every witch and wizard of marriageable age (fifteen, for whatever backward reason) to marry, but would also assign them their partner if they happened to be single.

That was, she supposed, how she found herself betrothed to one Harry James Potter. A match made... it would seem, by some Divination ritual that included a Seer with the amazing ability to match people with their perfect spouse.

Of course, Tracey didn't put very much store in Divination or Seers. But being practical as she was, and having that all-encompassing Slytherin trait geared toward self-preservation, Tracey Davis found no other option than to get to know her future spouse.

If she could not love him, which she didn't imagine she ever would because love was both weakness and a weapon, than she knew that she should at least try to be friends with the boy.

And honestly, were it not for their Houses, she might have, in the past, found that Harry Potter was quite likeable- once you got past his prejudice and suspicion against Slytherins.

Tracey never really expected, even as her friendship with Harry grew, that she might one day be telling her best friend, "I think I love my fiance," before promptly face-planting into her pillow.

If Daphne was surprised by this, her tone did not indicate it as she merely asked archly, "And what's brought this about?"

Tracey turned herself over in bed and scrubbed her hands over her face, pushing strands of her dark-auburn hair back.

"I don't know... he was just being so cute!" Tracey spoke through a half-groan as she thought of sitting next to the boy in the library, doing homework, and looking over at him to find him staring at her.

" _What?" she asked, thinking that there might be something on her face._

" _It's just that..." and he looked away, embarrassed before showing her his Potions Essay. "I seem to have been writing your name."_

"He'd been spacing out... trying to think what to write on his essay, and wrote my name about ten times before he realized what he was doing!" Tracey explained with a blush at how very sweet and adorable that was. And how she was sure no other boy would ever do that for her. And how on anyone else it might have seemed contrived, or stupid, or just laughable...

"Does this mean that Tracey Davis is experiencing the oh so dreaded fall that she vowed to never partake of?" Daphne asked in tones of mocking shock, even adding a hand to her breast for dramatic flare.

"Shut up!" Tracey retorted, grabbing her pillow and launching it at her friend's face, earning a squawk of indignation.

But Tracey wasn't really paying attention anymore because she was too busy thinking of Harry's expression and trying to fight off a smile at the thought that yeah... she might really be falling for Harry.

 _ **~FIN~**_

 _ **Please Reivew**_


	3. To The End

**Prompts:** (#42) PDA =Public Display of Affection. (#78) To The End.

* * *

 _ **To The End**_

"Harry Potter is dead!"

Tracey thought she went numb when she heard those words. While Ginny Weasley had screamed and tried to run forward, Tracey had tried will all her might just to remain standing. Just to breathe.

If she wasn't torn by grief so deep, so forceful and utterly devastating, she might have disdained at how Gryffindors were so external. Everything for show, everything so cheap. And how Slytherins were so much more internal, secret lives and depths living within, burrowing down to the center of their very bones.

Beside her, Daphne's hand seemed to be the only thing that held her up, that kept her grounded, that reminded her to just breathe even as her tear-filled eyes remained locked on the body cradled in Hagrid's arms and looking so small, so fragile.

 _He can't be gone, he can't be dead_... she kept thinking to herself even whilst knowing that there was no way that in his clutches, the Dark Lord would let him walk away alive.

Even when it all became a ruse as Harry leapt out of Hagrid's arms and moved, restarting the Battle, Tracey was still trying to adjust to reality. Was still to stricken to move.

"Tracey! Snap out of it or you'll get us killed!" Daphne had hissed at her while simultaneously covering her and fighting.

It was only focusing on the perspiration on her best friend's pale forehead, reminding her that Daphne had only stayed behind to stick by Tracey, that had her recovering and fighting once more.

There was no time to think about how one Potions class the previous year, had so irrevocably changed her life, when Slughorn paired her with Harry. How, in a way she could not comprehend, their mild arguments in class, grew into a challenging sort of friendship with undertones of attraction. How by the time he started dating Ginny Weasley, she felt she'd fallen so deeply that seeing him with the redhead had felt akin to searing her insides with Fiendfyre.

She hadn't hoped for anything more, even when she heard from Daphne that Harry and Ginny had broken up at the end of the year. Somehow, she didn't think it would really matter, especially not with open war on the horizon.

With the muggle-born registration act, and being a half-blood herself with no way to prove her magical lineage because she'd never met her father and her mother was muggle-born, she'd had no option but to go on the run. Losing all hope as she did so of ever seeing her friends or Harry again.

When she was captured by Snatchers, and the prospect of Azkaban looming over her, Tracey had been thoroughly surprised when instead, she found herself a prisoner at Malfoy Manor. It seemed that her unorthodox friendship with Harry had reached the Death Eaters, which really shouldn't have been surprising when considering Theodore, Crabbe, Goyle and Draco were all sons of Death Eaters, though she'd hoped fervently that Theodore hadn't been the one to sell her out. Not when they'd had such history together... not when he'd claimed to love her.

Even with herself and Luna as bait, Tracey didn't really think they would draw Harry out form wherever he was hiding. At least... she hoped it wouldn't.

But when he came, when she found herself in a cell with him, even her despair at it was not enough to keep her from wanting to sink into a hug because he was _alive_. And soon, they were all on a beach and while Harry mourned for the little House Elf, Tracey hadn't been able to think about anything other than being free and wondering how she could care for Harry so much, when their acquaintance was so short.

But it was things like that... seeing his compassion towards the small, ugly creature. It was the deep, resonating understanding she felt when they simply sat on the beach together, shoulders pressed together, not having to say a word, that seemed to say it all.

They simply... fit. And even if they weren't an item, even if there was no future for them, even if what she felt was one-sided, she was fine so long as he was happy. He deserved that.

X

She and Daphne were sitting on what was left of the main staircase, leaning on each other in their exhaustion and trying not to let their mental capabilities crumble in the wake of victory.

"She was waiting for him, you know," Daphne spoke, for the first time since their tears of relief had subsided after the culmination of all the excitement of the Dark Lord's death.

Tracey didn't have to guess who Daphne must mean, even if the words came out of nowhere. They were Slytherins- they tended to speak in as few words as possible. At least if you were a true Slytherin.

So with those words alone and the soft and tentative tone Daphne used... Tracey guessed who she meant and what she was talking about.

Tracey merely shrugged her shoulders.

"We didn't come into any sort of agreement when he left the cottage, and I don't expect it to mean more to him than the longstanding attachment he has to the Weasley's."

"You think you'll pick her because of her family?" Daphne asked, blonde brow furrowing as she turned to regard Tracey.

Tracey merely shrugged again.

"It would be easier. He might want easier... after everything. I saw how much it pained him... to be seen with me by her brothers at the cottage, the accusation in their eyes..."

Daphne scoffed. "Isn't he a Gryffindor?"

"Gryffindors aren't just brave... they do the right thing, especially Harry. He might think, it's the right thing."

There was a long pause, while Tracey stared at her feet, elbows on her knees, too tired to discuss it any further. Because she wasn't sure how to explain it to Daphne. How to tell her that every time she closed her eyes, she still saw him lifeless in Hagrid's arms and how imagining him alive and happy with someone else, was so much better than the world without him.

"I wouldn't be too sure of that," Daphne suddenly whispered, nudging Tracey to look up.

Tracey turned, and felt her heart leap as she saw Harry slowly approaching, a nervous but pleased smile flickering on his face.

Jumping to her feet, she twisted her hands together and forced herself to remain standing where she was even though she wanted to throw her arms around the boy and tell him how happy she was that he was alive. But those displays of emotion were not born naturally to a Slytherin, who feared vulnerability and rejection above all else.

"You made it!" he said, crushing her in a hug that was too brief for her to return, causing him to step back and release her, his cheeks turning somewhat pink while he rubbed the back of his head. "I mean... I'm sorry. I know you really don't like public displays of affection, but-"

Tracey shook her head, even as she ignored the thundering, fearful heart and wrapped her arms around him tightly.

"I don't care... I'm just happy you're alive," Tracey whispered into his neck where she burrowed her head, pressing her eyes tightly to shut the tears inside.

Harry's grip tightened around her slender frame as he released a shaky breath that Tracey could feel throughout her entire being.

"I was afraid... that you would be here... that something might-"

"Slytherins stick to who they love... to the very end," Tracey interrupted, turning her head slightly her voice trembling with the sentiment she was betraying. Sentiment she wasn't sure he returned, but that she could no longer keep contained- not after everything that happened. Not after she thought she'd lost him forever.

"Not just Slytherins," Harry returned, squeezing her even tighter and Tracey could say nothing- she merely smiled shakily as her heart expanded while the rest of the world continued to fall away, and all that seemed to exist was Harry and herself.

 _ **~FIN~**_

 **A/n:** Please review! Also, if anyone has a Harry/Tracey request, feel free to make requests through in a review!


	4. In His Arms

**A/N:** Wanted to dedicate this one to _WickedGreene13_ who requested it. I hope that I did some justice to your request and you enjoy it, even though it isn't really fluffy. If you want something fluffier, I'd be willing to write another version of this and make it fluffy. :)

Special thanks to everyone who has taken the time to review!

 **Prompts:** (#25) Hugs are the universal medicine. (#524) Silver Light.

* * *

 _ **In His Arms**_

 _ **~ Year I ~**_

Tracey Davis was a small, thin, quiet girl with dark auburn hair. Mostly, she kept to herself. Perhaps that was the reason that she never made much of an impression to Harry. In fact, he was quite sure he didn't even notice her in Potion's class, and couldn't tell you where she sat in first year, if he'd ever been asked.

Harry Potter on the other hand was impossible not to notice- not with all the attention given to him by students, and especially not after the way that Snape called him during their first Potions class.

If anyone bothered to ask Tracey her honest opinion... if she could bring herself to give it... she would have said there was nothing exactly about Harry Potter that stood out or made him particularly impressive. Except perhaps his penchant for drawing trouble to himself, and his quite impressive skills on a broom.

But Tracey Davis didn't really care about that and so... Harry Potter was never much on her mind.

 _ **~Year II ~**_

She hadn't exactly expected it. Though perhaps she should have, when considering the tension amongst her House-mates since the attacks started.

Half-blood as she was, if she hadn't already been prone to it, she would have adapted a low-profile.

As it was, having her books knocked out of her hands by Malfoy as he passed by her, quickly followed by a cackling Pansy Parkinson and a smirking Crabbe and Goyle, was annoying. But there was nothing that she could do about it. Not unless she wanted worse retaliation.

Bending down and getting on her knees, Tracey sighed as she stared with annoyance mixed with despair as she saw that her second-hand Charms book, which was already broken at the spine, had cracked, spilling many of it's pages which were now scattered along the corridor.

As she began to quickly scramble to pick up the loose pages lest they get lost as students continued to flow around her, she found herself internally cursing her house-mates and the students who did little more than look at her, or even laugh- not one bothering to help the Slytherin girl simply because of her House.

She was lamenting the fact that she was going to be late to Transfiguration and probably earn herself a detention from McGonagall, when she was startled by the sight of someone kneeling down near her.

Looking up startled, she froze as she found herself staring at one of the most unlikely people to help her, gathering pages in his hands. She was so startled by the sight of Gryffindors' golden-boy bothering to help her, that for several seconds, she did nothing more than stare at the top of his messy head.

"What are you doing?" Tracey blurted, her brows contracting as Harry Potter extended the pages he collected to her. She didn't move to take the pages, because for a moment, she almost felt that some sort of elaborate prank was being played on her and she couldn't help narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

"Helping you," he responded with a look on his face and a tone in his voice, that seemed to implicate that it should have been obvious.

"Why?" Tracey blurted, still not taking the pages.

"Well, because as the heir of Slytherin it only seemed right to help a Slytherin," Harry Potter responded with mild sarcasm, rolling his eyes.

As Tracey slowly took the pages, she couldn't help feeling somewhat guilty- though she roughly pushed it aside, not sure why she should feel guilty when she hadn't done anything wrong.

"You're not the heir," Tracey said, her voice certain and wry, rolling her own eyes.

At that Harry looked at Tracey with his own brows furrowing.

"What makes you so sure?"

"Anyone who's not an idiot would know that," Tracey replied as she finally took the pages of her book and jammed them inside, along with the rest, before getting to her feet. "I have to go," she said suddenly, as she remembered that she was going to be late for Transfiguration and started to walk hastily away, not looking at Potter's expression before stopping several feet away and turning around.

"Thanks... by the way," she said, her cheeks flushing at the idea of being so rude as to not have said it before, but turning hastily away and rushing once more, thinking with a frown as she went that... Harry Potter had actually been nice to her. And how strange it was that a Gryffindor of all people, would be the only person to show any kindness to a Slytherin.

 _ **~ Year III ~**_

Harry wasn't really sure how friendships usually started, never having had many himself.

Hermione and Ron... they'd sort of been thrown to in his life, and ever since taking on that troll together back in first year, there would be no separating them. It wasn't something that had happened gradually and over time, and one day, he suddenly realized that the people he started talking about school or sports to, had somewhere along the way become his friends.

Tracey he felt sure, would say that was because they were all Gryffindors, and therefore had no sense of subtlety, patience or discernment. Throw a dangerous situation at a Gryffindor, and someone to ally themselves with in that moment, and suddenly they thought their comrade for the moment was their friend for life.

Tracey thought it was stupid to become friends with someone, simply because of a life and death situation and to believe in such a person with blind faith. But then... Tracey found it difficult to trust.

Harry wasn't sure, when or how it happened... how one day Tracey was simply the sarcastic and mildly-defensive Slytherin he'd gotten stuck partnered with by Professor Lupin...and the one day someone he considered a friend.

He wasn't sure when he saw more than a guarded, slightly prickly girl who was... much to Hermione's annoyance, very bright and exceedingly good at Defense.

But one day- he was sure it was spring because birds were beginning to chirp outside and the Defense class felt less drafty- he'd looked towards his Defense partner, his eyes crinkling with laughter and a grin on his face and knowing... what he might have one day thought was insulting barb, was just the girl's way of teasing. And that thought her lips were quirked into a lopsided smirk... that her green eyes were sparkling with good-humour.

And oddly... he's somehow become friends with a Slytherin, and as astonishing as that was... he didn't really mind. And while he'd once been incredibly wary and put-off to be paired with a Slytherin for the year, he now found himself glad, disliking the thought that he might have missed out on this.

 _ **~Year IV~**_

Being friends with Tracey, was somehow different than being friends with Ron or even with Hermione.

Sometimes, it felt so strenuous and fragile... like when she couldn't look at him, and wouldn't acknowledge him if there were too many spectators around and made him want to shout at her, calling her unreliable and fickle. Moments where he thought whatever their bond was would shatter like a crystal figurine tipped off a fireplace mantle.

But sometimes, it seemed deeper and unshakeable, like through highs and lows... even in the moments where everyone else fell away... Tracey would always be there. Like an ache, settled deeply in his heart that he would never be free of.

Harry didn't understand it. How a girl with an aversion to letting people too close, how a girl who found affection as foreign as he did... how someone from _Slytherin-_ could become the one person he could depend on to simply... _believe_ him, believe _in_ him.

Somehow, she became someone he was sure he didn't deserve.

"What... are you here to call me a liar and a cheat too?" he could snipe at her, thrusting at her all his anger and bitterness because Ron... Hermione... the entire school believed him to have entered himself in a stupid tournament that might get him killed!

And Tracey merely gave him a patented, Slytherin, deadpan look, that was somehow mocking and exasperating, but also made him flush like he was in the wrong and look away in shame.

"Please Potter," and yeah... that was strange too, and sometimes it made something inside him twist like a jagged splinter in his stomach because it was so distancing, even as she rolled her eyes and brushed her shoulder against him. "I'm not stupid. _You'd_ have to be suicidal or mental to enter the tournament... and you're neither, from what I can tell so far. You're just a magnet for trouble, that's your problem."

And Harry felt breathless as he stared at her, completely stunned.

"You don't believe I entered the tournament?!"

And for a moment, the facade fell away, and she let him see beyond the sneer to something more quiet... more serious... more... open.

"To the people who really know you Harry, who care about you... they know in their hearts you didn't do this, even if their brains or stupid envy makes them think otherwise for the time being. Everyone else... they don't matter," she said once more nudging him and looking away and at her feet for a moment. "For what it's worth... I'll be cheering for you with all my might- with all my heart."

And those whispered words... that admission that sounded so vulnerable to his ears even as she pushed off away from him and started to walk away without looking at him, was better than any hug he might have received to date.

 _ **~Year V~**_

"You're having a rough go of it again, aren't you?" she asks in a tone that is both resigned and exhausted, as they both sat together with their backs to a tree trunk as the wind, which felt nippy, forced them to huddle themselves deeper into their robes and cloaks.

Neither one was sitting on the same side, even as they are hidden away from the view of all others and Harry plucked bitterly at the grass between his legs. Because this was the first time they've managed to get away to talk, because it's harder now to just talk to Tracey with the silent war being waged between their houses while everyone pretends that life is normal. Because it feels like it's always going to be like this... both huddled in on themselves, facing different directions, pretending to all the world that they're not as close as they are... and he misses his friend who seems to get him better than anyone else.

"Oh... noticed did you? I thought you were too wrapped up with Nott to notice. Has he convinced you yet that I'm just a liar and making everything up?" And he doesn't really know why he brought up Theodore Nott. Why the idea of Tracey spending so much time with the extremely tall, skinny boy she agreed to let take her to the Yule Ball and who became her boyfriend, bothers him so much.

"I'm scared, Harry," she whispers, and the admission causes Harry's head to snap and look at her, but Tracey is staring at her knees, which she is now hugging tightly to her chest as she stares down, her eyes looking suspiciously glassy and something inside Harry twists and breaks. His anger seems to wither. "I... I know... he's back..."

And suddenly Harry is on his knees and in front of Tracey and staring at her.

"What?!" he asks in agitation, staring at her hard. And Tracey looks up at him slowly and gives him a look. A look she's given him many times, silently asking him if he ever uses his brain, but this time she's not teasing or playfully insulting him. This time, there is worry and fear etched on every inch of her.

"Everyone in Slytherin _know's_ , Harry," and she's still whispering, her eyes holding onto him, forcing him into silence while her voice wavers with severity. "There were signs and... people … like Malfoy... like Theo... they all _know_ and everyone else who's not connected directly in my House... we figure it out. And those with any brains... we're _scared_ , Harry. This is _war_... coming for _all_ of us. _Everyone..._ his followers too... and with war comes death."

And Harry is trying, his mind faltering and sputtering in the attempt to see past the irony that the only students who believe him, who knew and accepted what he knows, are Death Eater spawn... the very ones who it most behooved to keep it under wraps.

"Then why don't you say anything? And how can you be with someone who's dad is a Death Eater?!" And the anger is surging again, and he's glaring at the girl who always understands him, but who always confuses him. Twists him up into knots, like nothing else ever has. A mystery he's not sure he'll ever managed to solve.

"You don't know what it's like for me!" And now her voice is raised too, and there are red splotches on her cheek which are infuriatingly flattering on her milky skin. And Harry almost stumbles back, because Tracey never raises her voice... never loses control of her anger like that. And she isn't done as she gets to her feet, and balls her hands into fists. "I'm a half-blood in a house filled with angry, damaged people who take signs of weakness as excuses to excise their anger! I'm just trying to survive! And Theo isn't like his father! And he's not like Malfoy! He might not be battling dragons, or saving people, or taking on the Dark Lord, but he's brave in his own way and he makes my life easier!"

"What's that supposed to mean, that I make your life difficult?" Harry asks angrily where he stands, looking down at the small, angry girl.

And Tracey looks away then, and Harry knows it's true... that he does make her life difficult, and he's not quite sure why that hurts so much.

"Everyone can't be like you, Harry," Tracey replies, after taking a deep breath and releasing it, visibly deflating and somehow becoming smaller. "We're not all noble, and stupidly brave and have hope that things will turn up right. Most of us are just trying to survive, and find a way to live with ourselves."

Harry can feel a rift, yawning between them. He wants to reach out before that rift becomes a chasm, to hold her hand and forget everything that has been said. But he can't do that, even though his heart is fracturing into pieces, and she'll take them all with her and he doesn't think he'll ever be the same again... because this is the girl that took his hand after the Tournament, and told him that Cedric's death was not his fault. Because this is the girl, who knew he hated the attention, and didn't believe for a nano-second he put his name in the stupid cup. Because this is the girl that cheered for him, because she knew the danger he was in, and she didn't want him to get hurt.

But he can't close the widening gap... he can't bring himself to move, even as he hates himself for being so disenchanted and disappointed. But he can't bring himself to see her side of it.

She looks at him then with sad and knowing eyes, shining with her own disappointment- disappointment that stings him as much as his own- and she nods at him.

"This is always how I knew this would end, you know. Somehow I foolishly... impossibly even, hoped..." she trails off and smiles sadly, looking away, taking a shuddering breath that sounds like she's breaking. "But that was stupid. I know better... I should've just..." and she shakes her head again.

And then she's turning away from him and Harry wants so much to stop her. Her movements seems agonizingly slow, like she wants him to stop her. He can count her steps, as she moves away... and despite his desire, he can't bring himself to go after her even though he knows, that not doing so, signifies the end.

But maybe, he finds himself thinking as he tries to ignore the ache in his chest and the way his throat stings while her shape becomes blurry and indistinguishable, it's better this way.

 _ **~Year VI~**_

He finds himself often watching her, much to his annoyance, though he never sees her look his way.

It hurts every time he looks at her, because it seems so easy for her, to pretend that nothing has changed in her life. To watch her flirt and be playful with Theodore Nott, and never once look at him, making him feel that he's dreamed their entire friendship up in his head, or that it never meant anything to her anyway.

But somehow the time passes. And it gets a bit easier until sometimes, he finds his eyes have drifted to her when his mind is blank.

When Sirius dies... and it's really all his fault... that's the first time Harry really thinks he's going to break and go to Tracey. Because she's the only one whose words every really made a difference to him. Because she's the only friend he seemed to have, every time his world was falling apart, who made him feel it was merely transitory.

But they're not friends anymore, and he's not sure they ever were. He's not sure he ever meant anything to her and he never even told her about Sirius anyway, so what could he even say about it?

It takes a summer for the ache for her words, for her presence, to fade away. Once school starts up again, there is too much else to worry about, to think about Tracey much, what with the fate of the world resting on his shoulders.

He almost thinks he forgets about Tracey... but then he sees her again at Slughorn's party. She's alone, leaning against one of the pillars with her arms behind her back, looking extremely bored but... beautiful, so beautiful, in her shimmering, dark purple dress-robes. And for a moment, it's like he's back in fourth year again, having Tracey's beauty and femininity burned into his eyes and through his sockets and frying his brain- and he almost wishes he'd asked her to the ball instead of Cho, and Parvati...

He almost jumps out of his skin, when her eyes drift to him. The air seems so suspend in his lungs, while his chest is frozen mid-expansion until the ache starts up as he notices the sad glint in her eyes as she looks at him.

For that moment, he knows they were real... that though time has passed that they still care for each other and miss each other.

But just like that, he knows they've hurt each other, and he's not quite sure who looked away first but when he looks up again, she's turned away from him and is hiding herself in Theodore Nott's arms, and all he can see of her is her dwarfed body, and her shiny dark hair as she makes herself as small as possible, her own hands clutching tightly to Nott.

Harry turns away then, his heart aching with the knowledge, that he would have liked one real hug from Tracey. That as much as her words had offered that same consolation, that he wanted the real thing and now all he could do was wonder, how she could hug Nott, but had never hugged him.

 _ **~Year VII~**_

"Tracey's like a silver light... you think it's cold, and that you can never touch it, but all the same it brightens your world," Theodore Nott tells him when Harry grabs him by the robes before he can exit the Great Hall along with the rest of the Slytherins fleeing the castle. And Harry grits his teeth as he glares up at the taller, pale boy, wondering what Tracey ever saw in him, but not really caring because he'd been frantically searching the Great Hall, and he couldn't see her.

"Where is she, Nott?!" Harry grits out, as the boy looks down at him with dead, grey eyes and Harry feels his stomach sinking.

"You don't deserve her... you never could with your Gryffindor rigidity," Theodore remarks, his tone dark and harboring a tendril of deep-seeded loathing.

Harry shakes him and yells, "Where is she?!"

"I don't know! I thought I could protect her... and that her mother being a Lestrange might be enough once her muggle-born father went into hiding, but Rodolphous and Rabastan murdered her mother... I don't know what they did to Tracey! Or if she escaped! Or if she got caught by the snatchers! I don't KNOW!" Theodore shouts back, his voice becoming hysterical and Harry understands because he can't breathe... his heart feels like it's going to burst from his chest. "She didn't come back!"

"Harry," Hermione pleads, trying to pull him away and he stumbles, thinking his knees are going to give out even as Theodore is being dragged away himself. And Harry wants to call him a coward. Wants to yell at him, how could he not do anything to protect Tracey, to save her... to find her!

But then... he'd spent a year running. And as much as he wondered where Tracey was, and hoping she was safely at school, being comforted that being a Slytherin as she was, she had to be somewhat safe, he'd never dreamed she could be lost... or gone.

He wants to fall apart. He wants to walk away form the castle and tear the world apart in search for her.

"Harry... Harry you can't think about her now. We'll find her... I promise... But right now, we need you here!" Hermione says, shaking him. "I'm sure she's alive... but we can't do anything for her if we don't fight, Harry!"

Harry nods, and he's not sure how he can get through the night. It's an odd mixture of hopelessness and hopefulness, driving him through the night, pushing him along with the adrenaline coursing through his veins. He hopes with all his heart, that Tracey is safe, and that the harder he fights, that he'll find a way to get to her.

But in the deepest corners of his mind he thinks, that if he fails... if he dies... that wouldn't be quite so awful, if she was already gone too.

 _ **OO**_

He finds Tracey, though he can never say that he saved her. She's been in Azkaban for three months and is released amongst the other survivors who were unlucky enough to be carted off to Azkaban.

And though she's painfully thin, and pale, and her hair is matted and her eyes dulled and almost hollow... she's beautiful, and _alive_ and tries so wanly to smile at him when she sees him. And though it's not the way he would have wanted it, she sinks into his arms and clutches him tightly, as if its where she'd always belonged, where she would always end up... like she's been there many times before and as Harry feels the bones in her body as he holds her close and tries to shield her from the rest of the world, he vows to himself to never let her go.

Later, she curls into his side, not letting go for a moment, making her small and sickly frame even smaller as she tries to burrow as deeply as she can into him... so much so that he thinks she's trying to burrow under his skin for safety.

And in a hollow and emotionless voice, that she tells him her story.

How her father went on the run, and they all thought she'd be safer with her mother, who was pureblooded. How the Lestrange brothers... her uncles... murdered her mother and took Tracey while she was asleep, and there had been nothing she could do to save her mother, much less herself. How she'd been kept locked in a room in Malfoy Manor, and for a time pretended to be Imperiused while plotting her escape.

It took her three months to escape... and shockingly to Harry, it had been with her pockets full of Galleons and a wand Draco Malfoy stole from one of the Snatchers, all of which he'd clandestinely managed to sneak to her.

For months, she lived anonymously as just another muggle, always looking over her shoulder and never able to contact anyone for fear that she might be traced, even if she knew where she could find them. She did all right for a time, but then she ran into a Snatcher, who'd been a few years ahead of them and had recognized her as a Hogwarts student- some ex-Ravenclaw.

"I didn't tell them who I really was, I couldn't. It was too risky, and I'd probably be killed and might endanger Draco too, because he helped me escape.

"I gave them a fake name... unfortunately it happened to match one on their list and they carted me off to the Ministry. Obviously, it's pointless to argue with them, so I didn't say anything... I thought if I did I might lose my temper and make things worse. I think they would have snapped my wand and then just thrown me out on the streets, but when they realized the wand I carried had been taken off a Snatcher, they sentenced me to Azkaban."

Harry held her closer as she shuddered at the mention of Azkaban.

Tracey didn't tell him how awful it had been there and Harry didn't ask. He didn't have to, to know and feel guilty for it.

"It isn't your fault, you know," she says quietly into his chest, somehow knowing him in spite of their separation... and all the time lost between.

"I should've been there for you... I shouldn't have-" Harry exclaims with regret and self-loathing, not understanding how the waif of a girl... this shadow of the vibrant witch he'd grown to love... how she could still find strength to try to comfort him after what she's been through.

"It wouldn't have changed anything, Harry. I would still be a half-blood. My mother would still have been considered a blood-traitor. You did everything you could to stop him... and by doing so, you saved me and everyone else..."

For a while, Harry says nothing and merely tightens his hold as he sinks further into the couch.

"I just... wish I could take it all away," Harry says, wishing there was anything he could do, to wipe away the pain of the past year from Tracey's heart and soul.

And impossibly, Tracey merely presses her face closer to his chest.

"Just hold me... that's all I need for now."

And though Harry doesn't know what to expect from the future... doesn't know if he'll ever be able to call Tracey his, or tell her that he loves her... that he's been in love with her for longer than he's realized... he knows that it isn't the time. That for now... this hug is everything they both need.

 _ **~FIN~**_

 _ **A/n:**_ Remember to review please! Requests welcome too!


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